The globe is a potent symbol, and one that can mean very different things in dif- ferent eras. Fortune has often used the motif—fittingly, perhaps, for the magazine founded in 1929 by Henry Luce, a globalist before that term came into vogue. His famous 1941 essay “The American Century” laid out an idealistic vision of a global era dominated by a nation only recently freed from colonialism—flawed yet aspirational in its democracy, and rich with
the promise of a “more abundant life,” both materially and culturally. Luce’s worldview has been reflected on dozens of our covers, as rep- resented in this selection, curated by Fortune creative director Josue Evilla. From the 1933 line drawing of the goddess Fortuna lovingly cradling the globe to the Bauhaus starkness of Walter Allner’s 1957 depiction of global trade to the Rubik’s Cube–like metal globe on the 2015 cover announcing our first Change the World list, Luce’s humane internationalism lives on.
This article appears in the August/September 2025 issue of Fortune with the headline “Round and round it goes.”